Gregory Jason Bell
11 September 2006
History of the U.S. South- Dr. Wayne Durrill
Part 1: Question 1. Compare slavery in the American South in the 18th and 19th
centuries. How did slavery in the two centuries differ? How did slavery change?
And why?
There are competing theories as to how slavery developed in America in the 17th
century. For instance, in The White Man’s Burden, Winthrop Jordan argues that blacks
were “born branded” and had been treated differently since Biblical times. Nicholas
Canny, on the other hand, argues that the English took their own experiences with the
heathen Irish, combined those with observations of how the Spanish treated Native
Americans, and formulated an attitude, and a way of treating, first the Native Americans,
and then the blacks in America. And, as Christopher Phillips pointed out in a lecture,
there was already a negative connotation to blackness in England in the Elizabethan era
in the 16th century, and this connotation was surely “mental luggage” for the first English
colonists. Yet, in the 17th century, there was a formative period in race relations in
America. Although, as Joe Thornton points out, black slaves were first introduced into
America in 1619 in Virginia, it is well documented by T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes in
Mynne Owne Ground that 17th century blacks could be free, could own a gun, could own
land, could do business with and socialize with whites, etc. It was not until the 1670s,
they point out, that blacks in Virginia began to be stripped of their rights. Breen and Innes
point to Bacon’s rebellion, a class struggle in which blacks took part, as the catalyst for
this change. Oscar and Mary Handlin, on the other hand, argue that slavery arose first and
foremost as a legal institution. They contend that in the 17th century, all workers were
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unfree, and that slavery was just the lowest level in a hierarchy of unfreedom. However,
by the 1660s, the law started to make distinctions between blacks and other unfree
people. And, by the 1680s, as a huge influx in the black population prompted fear among
whites, legal measures were put in place to equate slavery with blackness. That said, as
Ira Berlin points out in his work, Many Thousands Gone, slavery in America was not
monolithic. It was fluid and contingent on many variables, and differed through time and
place. This essay will chart some of the differences in slavery in the American South that
historians have documented, and will demonstrate how slavery changed and why.
First, it should be mentioned that a form of slavery existed in America before
black chattel slavery developed in the 17th century. Native Americans had long engaged
in captivity. In the east, this translated into “mourning wars” in which Indians would take
captives from other tribes, either as future religious sacrifices or in order to incorporate
them into their tribes. In the southwest, as James Brooks has documented in Captives and
Cousins, a hybrid form of slavery developed thanks to the influences of Indian captivity
and the Spanish form of slavery. Ultimately, however, these slaves were treated more like
servants and were even incorporated into the families of the slaveowners. This Spanish
form of slavery also existed in Florida, but it was kinder than chattel slavery, for it was
tempered by a desire to convert blacks to Catholicism. In fact, Joe Thornton argues that
many blacks were already Catholic, having been converted to Catholicism by African
missionaries. He further concludes that part of the reason for the Stono Rebellion in
South Carolina in 1739 was that the blacks were trying to escape to the freedom of their
Catholic brethren in Florida. On the other hand, Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood, in Come
Shouting to Zion, contend that blacks in America largely rejected Christianity until the
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1750s. Unfortunately, sources are few, and we may never know the truth. Anyway, Theda
Purdue also studied the Indians, the Cherokee, and she documents how they made the
shift from Indian captivity to black chattel slavery, but that they incorporated their
captivity traditions into slavery so that Cherokee slavery was not as severe as white
slavery in the South.
As far as South Carolina is concerned, there are two studies that demonstrate the
development of slavery in that area and how slavery in that area differed from slavery in
other areas of the South. In Black Majority, Peter Wood documents the evolution of
slavery in the colony. He says that slavery there went through 3 phases. From 1670 to
1690 (Notice the dates are very similar to the dates put forward by Breen and Innes and
the Handlins) it went through a formative phase, during which blacks still had some
rights. However, between 1690 and 1720, blacks became a majority in South Carolina,
resulting in great white anxiety. Then between 1720 and 1739, whites began legally
constricting the rights of blacks. This resulted in the Stono Rebellion in 1739, which led
to South Carolina whites passing the Negro Acts of 1740, which resulted in chattel
slavery, the absence of rights. The second study is Phillip Morgan’s Slave Counterpoint,
in which he compares the slave societies in the South Carolina Lowcountry and in
Virginia. Morgan contends that although these two societies developed differently, they
were both mature slave societies by the 19th century. However, he argues that the primary
cash crops grown in these societies made them different. Although it was easier, he says,
to work tobacco in South Carolina, the slaveowners were more involved in their slaves’
lives and made autonomy difficult. Whereas in South Carolina, rice was a difficult crop
to grow, but slaves were allowed more autonomy, including being allowed to keep some
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of their African culture and traditions. They also had a better family life. Thus, Morgan
concludes that although the work was harder in South Carolina, slavery was more harsh
in Virginia.
Slavery was different in Georgia as well. As James Oakes documents in his article
“Slavery as an American Problem,” Georgia was founded as a free colony in the 1730s
by Oglethorpe. The colonists originally embraced the idea, but as they watched their
fellow colonists in South Carolina become more and more wealthy off of rice and indigo,
and build huge plantations on the Sea Islands and in Charleston, the Georgia colonists
became greedy and desired to allow slavery in their colony as well. When Oglethorpe
would not permit it, they got rid of him and embraced slavery with a vengeance.
Georgians, in fact, became some of the most ardent defenders of slavery in the 19th
century. This idea of the roots of slavery being fed by greed, especially the desire to
acquire more and more land, is also documented by Breen and Innes, as well as by
Richard Dunn in Sugar and Slaves. In fact, Dunn suggests that slavery in the Caribbean
was based on “economic exploitation,” and Oakes’s Georgia example only seems to
confirm this fact.
Likewise, greed also fueled slavery’s move west. In A Family Venture, Joan
Cashin demonstrates that it was acquisitiveness that prompted planters’ sons to move
west into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and take their families with
them. In making this move, these men chose land not based on what would be best for
their families, but based on economic motives. Also, the paternalism that governed
society in South Carolina was replaced by patriarchy in the West. As white men pursued
their own selfish interests, they often did so to the detriment of all of those they mastered
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over. Concerning paternalism, Eugene Genovese argues that paternalism increased over
time as the master-slave relationship matured into a symbiotic relationship based on
hegemony. James Oakes, however, says the capitalist impulse caused paternalism to
decrease over time, as the quest for the almighty dollar put pressure on the master-slave
relationship. Joan Cashin would agree with James Oakes. So would Michael Tadman,
whose study of slave sales suggests that masters were less paternalistic and more
capitalistic than Genovese would have us believe.
Historian Daniel Usner also studied the Old Southwest in the 18th century, and he
argued that society was defined by a mixture of cultures: Spanish, French, black, creole,
and others. In this society, slavery was not firmly defined and blacks indeed had rights. It
was not until after 1763 that the English idea of black chattel slavery began to hold sway.
Usner also argues that the English ideas was instituted from the top down, with capitalists
and merchants invading the area, promoting the spread of the plantation system. Still, as
Ira Berlin suggests in Many Thousands Gone, slavery in the lower Mississippi Valley was
unique. He makes a distinction between “slave societies” and “societies with slaves,” and
he contends that the lower Mississippi Valley was a “society with slaves.” Certainly
Daniel Usner would agree with him and argue that it was the region’s unique history,
with its blending of cultures, that made slavery unique in the area. By the way, Berlin
also argues that white attitudes towards slavery in the Lower South were different from
slavery in the Upper South. In the Lower South, slavery was seen as a “positive good,’
whereas in the Upper South, slavery was viewed as a “necessary evil.” However, he
argues that by the 1850s the Upper South had adopted the Lower South’s views on the
matter.
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Historian Stephen Aron, whom I am told that Christopher Phillips will take to task
in his new book on Kentucky, argues in How the West Was Lost that Kentucky was a
frontier occupied by the likes of Daniel Boone until the late 18th century. Then, planters
and planters’ sons from Virginia moved west to Kentucky for land and brought the
institution of slavery with them. In fact, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
makes the case that when people, inventions, ways of life, etc. move, they move along the
same latitude, thus it makes perfect sense that Virginians would take tobacco and slaves
with them to Kentucky. Aron goes on to document how Henry Clay, who was against
slavery when he moved to Kentucky, soon was overcome by his acquisitive impulses and
began amassing large amounts of land and slaves. Thus, for Aron, Kentucky ceased to be
the frontier and became part of America. Furthermore, Christopher Phillips points out in
Missouri’s Confederate that the extension of slavery into Missouri from Kentucky was as
natural as the extension of slavery from Virginia to Kentucky. He argues convincingly
that slavery was synonymous with democracy, and that it was the white man’s right
under liberalism, one of the three pillars on which the country was formed, to own
property, including slaves. In other words, once blacks became property, the rights of the
property owners had to be protected.
Mentioning Kentucky brings up another aspect of slavery in the South, this being
slavery in the borderland. As Stuart Sprague documents in His Promised Land: the
Autobiography of John Parker, slavery in Kentucky was porous and not firm. There were
limits of slavery and freedom in the borderland. In fact, the further north you went, the
more slavery became a negotiation between humans. However, as Sprague also
documents, the fact that John Parker could escape and elude recapture for months in
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Louisiana suggests that slavery had its limits everywhere in the South. Of course, as
historians, Ira Berlin, Harold Gutman, Steven Hahn, Stephanie Camp, Lawrence Lavine,
and even Wayne Durrill have suggested, slaves had agency, and white rule over them was
never complete.
Two, other aspects of slavery in the South should be dealt with, the first being the
pressure placed on slavery by the Revolution. As Sylvia Frey documents in Water From
the Rock, the British were uneasy liberators of slaves. Yes, they freed thousands of them
and put them to work in and for the British Army, but they also hoped to win the war and
get the colonies back into the fold. For this reason, they did not want to alienate the
Torrie planters, nor did they want to damage a very profitable economic system that
might even help recoup the economic losses of the war. Furthermore, like the American
whites, the British whites also felt that the blacks were not as civilized and were not their
equals. The result of this was that, although they did free many slaves, they also
sometimes sold them back into slavery in exchange for supplies. This general attitude of
racial supremacy among whites has also been well documented by Kenneth Stampp in
The Peculiar Institution, George Fredrickson in The Black Image in the White Mind, and
W. J. Cash in The Mind of the South. Cash refers to it as the “proto-dorian convention.”
The second, and final aspect of slavery to be dealt with in this essay is slavery in
the cities. Richard Wade, in Slavery in the Cities, argues that urban slavery blurred the
distinctions between slave and free, and that urban slaves had more freedom and a higher
standard of living than rural slaves. Wade contends that such blurring of distinctions
resulted in segregation. Christopher Phillips, in Freedom’s Port, confirms many of
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Wade’s conclusions but suggests that the blurring of distinctions in Baltimore resulted
not as much in segregation but in a loss of rights on the part of free blacks in the city.
Howard Rebinowitz, in his book on the urban south, argues that blacks in the cities,
whether free or slave, were secluded.
Thus, as Ira Berlin argued in Many Thousands Gone, slavery in America was
fluid and contingent on many variables, and differed through time and place. It had many
different creations, and it evolved to meet the particular needs of each individual location
in which it was utilized as a labor system. However, I ultimately agree with Kenneth
Stampp and Stanley Elkins that slavery, although it varied in degree, was always
exploitive and was always morally wrong.
Part 2: Question 2. What has been at issue in the historiography of race in the South
over the past century? Why are we still talking about what happened or failed to
happen? What connections have these debates among historians had with political
or social issues in the 20th century?
Historians tend to argue that racism in the South in the last century reconstituted
itself. As Leon Litwack pointed out, racism increased dramatically after the Civil War.
For whites, slavery had controlled blacks, and with the absence of slavery, new methods
were needed. In When the War Was Over, Dan Carter argues that during Presidential
Reconstruction whites were briefly willing to entertain limited rights for blacks, but
because Johnson’s policies did not push the issue, white resolve against black equality
was allowed to harden and was concrete by the time Congressional Reconstruction
began. Dan Carter, however, is a minority among historians in making this argument. For
instance, Michael Perman argues in Reunion Without Compromise that whites were
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defeated but always defiant. Anne Rubin agrees, arguing that loyalty to the Confederacy
long outlived the demise of the political Confederacy, and that the symbols of the
Confederacy were simply reconstituted to meet new needs. Likewise, James Roark, in
Masters Without Slaves, contends that masters held on to their belief in the inferiority of
blacks, and that they simply replaced paternalism with sharecropping and virulent racism.
Other historians have devised complicated theories to explain the rise of racism in
the New South. In Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. DuBois argues that there was a
formative period in race relations that lasted until the 1880s. During this period,
egalitarianism, he argues, was a possibility, but the courts in the US precluded it. In The
Strange Career of Jim Crow, C. Vann Woodward also argues for a formative period, this
time between 1870 and 1890, when competing visions, conservative, liberal, and radical,
were all tried out, but all waned, allowing deeply engrained racism, and segregation, to
rise to the forefront. In the Crucible of Race, Joel Williamson, also arguing for a
formative period, contends that liberalism quickly gave way, that conservatism held sway
through the 1880s, was replaced by radicalism (virulent racism) in the 1890s, only to be
superseded by conservatism again in the 1920s. However, he argues, the conservatives of
the 20s chose not to erase the racist gains of the radicals in the previous period. Not to be
outdone, David Blight, in Race and Reunion, argues that the white supremacist and
reconciliationist viewpoints combined to defeat the emancipationist viewpoint. And
finally, in an article titled, “From Seclusion to Exclusion,” Howard Rabinowitz contends
that inclusion was never an option, that the Republicans moved immediately to exclusion
and that the Redeemers simply adopted the stance handed to them. He is not the only one
that sees continuity between the Republicans and the Redeemers. In Origins of the New
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South, Woodward identifies this continuity as well and says that the Whiggish Democrats
simply picked up where the Republicans left off. None of them wanted black equality.
George Fredrickson agrees, arguing that black equality was never an issue for the vast
majority of white Americans. And, W. J. Cash argues for continuity between the
plantation of the Old South and the mill of the New South. What whites really wanted
was to keep the blacks subservient and to keep them working.
No matter how the formative period played out, most historians agree that by the
1890s the racism of the New South, and the segregation and Jim Crow laws that
accompanied it, were deeply engrained, so much so that it was racism that broke up the
Southern Populists in the 1890s. It was also in the late 1880s that the New South Creed
came to the forefront. Paul Gaston, in his book The New South Creed, argues that the
New South Creed offered a “psychological wage” to Southerners and that it helped them
make the transition from the Old South to the New South. Unfortunately, contends
Gaston, the New South theorists sold the South out to Northern capitalist interests at
unfavorable terms. Also, the creed, he says, supported the white supremacist attitudes of
Southerners. Another important aspect of the New South, separate but at times
indistinguishable from the creed itself, was Lost Cause mythology. In Ghosts of the
Confederacy, Gaines Foster argues that, much like the New South Creed, the Lost Cause
helped Southerners make the transition from old to new. It was, in Foster’s mind,
Progressive, but he contends that it did not have a lasting influence on Southern thought.
Thomas Connelly and Barbara Bellows disagree, arguing that the Lost Cause did indeed
have a lasting influence on the New South, for it caused Southerners to define themselves
by their loss. C. R. Wilson concurs, contending in Baptized in Blood that the Lost Cause
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became a secular religion for Southerners. Southerners, he wrote, couched their defeat in
religious terms, saying that they were paying penance but that redemption would soon
come. Discounting Gaines Foster’s argument, it seems clear to me that blacks, by simply
being free and living their lives as free people, were a constant reminder to Southern
whites that the South had lost the war. Psychologically speaking, this would only serve to
strengthen both Lost Cause and racist sentiments.
Of course, scientists and other intellectuals gave whites a bevy of reasons to
maintain their sentiments towards blacks. Richard Hofstadter documents the important
role that Social Darwinism played in perpetuating both the myth of black racial
inferiority and the poor treatment of blacks by whites. Robert Rydell, in All the World’s a
Fair, demonstrates the import role that ethnology played in determining racial hierarchy
at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Simply, whites were at the
top of the evolutionary scale and were the most civilized, while blacks were at the bottom
of the scale. The results of such science extended beyond blacks in the South, as white
Americans used their ideas on racial hierarchy to justify the Spanish American War,
Gunboat Diplomacy in Latin America, as well as forays into the South Pacific and the
control of the Philippines that lasted until the end of World War II. Of course, the spread
of free-market capitalism, with a need for refueling stations for merchant ships
throughout the world, also played a role in the US’s international policy at this time, but
below it all was the justification of white supremacy and the spread of civilization.
Black hopes that World War I would change things only went unfulfilled, as the end of
the war brought a conservative backlash and a desire for a return to normalcy, which in
the South translated to more Jim Crow. W. Fitzhugh Brundage documents that lynchings
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occurred throughout Georgia in the 20s, as whites tried to maintain societal control. As
Gail Bederman documents in Manliness and Civilization, black men were considered
beasts that had to be controlled, lest they unleash an assault on white women. D. W.
Griffith’s Birth of a Nation only perpetuated this stereotype, but as Brundage confirmed
through extensive research, there is little evidence that black men ever posed a real threat
to white women. Instead, it was a crisis of fear constructed by whites to justify keeping
blacks in a subservient position.
Blacks did make gains during this time, Evelyn Higginbotham documents how
black women, by preaching moral respectability, were able to put themselves in a
position to negotiate with whites. And Earl Lewis documents how blacks switched
techniques, by concentrating first on social improvements in the home and work spheres,
to just concentrating on the home sphere in the 20s, to reengaging the work sphere in the
30s. As Harvard Sitkoff has documented, the New Deal, and the liberal attitudes of the
Roosevelts, went a long way in reducing racism in the South. Brundage agrees, proving
that progressive reforms in the 30s helped reduce the number of lynchings in Georgia. Of
course World War II, as Timothy Tyson documents in Radio Free Dixie, furthered race
relations as blacks came home demanding the same treatment they had received in
Europe and hoping for the ultimate institution in the South of the democratic principles
for which they had fought and died. And, as Mary Dudziak argues, the Cold War
propaganda of Communists went a long way towards achieving equality for blacks in the
South. Unfortunately, as Numan Bartley documents, there was also a racist backlash in
the 50s over the integration of schools, but this backlash subsided as whites realized that
it went counter to progress.
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This set the stage for the Civil Rights movement, and not coincidently, the
centennial of the end of the Civil War when blacks were emancipated. Blacks were
largely excluded from these celebrations, just like they had been during the 50th
anniversary. In fact, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, in The Southern Past, demonstrates how
whites controlled the historical memory of the South and refashioned “South” to be
synonymous with “white.” It was not until after the Civil Rights Movement that blacks
were successful in starting to construct their own counter-narrative. Furthermore, whites
in the 60s began to help blacks. As Alan Brinkley documents, young whites in the 60s
began to agitate for, not only the end of the Vietnam War, but for racial equality. These
young whites, who came to be known as the New Left, not only joined SDS and other
civil rights organizations but began to revise history to be more inclusive of all people,
not just white men. Known as Revisionist historians, of which Alan Brinkley is one, they
began to rewrite history to give blacks the agency that had so long been denied to them
by the romanticists, positivists, and relativists. Suddenly, whites were portrayed as greedy
conquerors, not civilizers, and this portrayal went a long way towards diminishing white
supremacy. Instead, some whites began to feel sorry for how their ancestors had treated
minorities; mind you, not sorry enough to pay reparations, but sorry enough to adopt
affirmative action programs.
And yet, according to Dan Carter in his new book, From George Wallace to Newt
Gingrich, we are now in the midst of another conservative backlash, in which lower and
middle class conservative whites in the Red States in the South are still racist, and are
electing candidates such as George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Newt
Gingrich, who espouse covert support for racism and white supremacy. Still, other
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historians such a David Roediger and Joan Melish agree with sociologist William Wilson
that racism is not the main issue, class is. Barbara Fields and Nell Painter vehemently
disagree, arguing in a Myrdalian fashion that race is the preeminent problem facing
America today. Either way, it is this argument, going forward, that should produce the
most meaningful scholarship in terms of impact on political and social issues in the 21st
century.